Ten photos mainly
taken by Betty Nolan are posted at www.kodakgallery.com
in an album entitled “Ireland
– 2010” under the account of Lewis “Buzz” Nolan’s email address. Email lewis_nolan@yahoo.com for instructions
on how to access.

By LEWIS NOLAN

May 2, 2010 – Sunday –
Travel from Memphis to Boston
and Ireland

Betty and I were up early in our home near the middle of Memphis, Tenn.,
after a day of perhaps record rainfall all day Saturday that had dumped up to
12 inches of water in the area.

Betty Nolan on
grassy, stone wall on Dingle Peninsula in Southwest Ireland near Slea Head

It has been a very wet and rather cool spring. Parts of our
home ShelbyCounty
had flooded and several hundred residents of suburban Millington (site of a big U.S. Navy base) had
been evacuated by boat. Even our City Hall in downtown Memphis had been partially flooded. But at
least we could tell ourselves that the really bad weather had passed through
and the weather outlook for our long day of traveling was favorable.

Our friend Linda Ray, a home health care professional who
had expertly provided care for me three years ago during my long recovery from
a brain aneurysm, had offered to drive us to the Memphis International Airport.
She picked us up at 6 a.m. and helped load our two big suitcases packed by
Betty into her car. Check-in went smoothly, in no small part due to the
splendid travel arrangements made so meticulously by our agent, Erin Bobbit of Gullivers’s Travel in Memphis.

Our Delta flight on a regional jet departed on time for Boston at 8:40 a.m. The
seating in tourist class is relatively tight and no food other than light
snacks and soft drinks are served passengers. At least we had a window and an
aisle seat on the medium-sized jet. It had only one restroom at the rear of
Tourist Class. The flight took nearly three hours, which passed quickly due to
our excitement to be on our first trip back to Ireland in seven years.

We took the early flight to Boston on the advice of travel agent Erin to
give us plenty of time in case of problems and also to further accumulate
frequent flyer mileage on Delta for use later. Since Delta’s service to ShannonAirport
in the west side of Ireland
is not presently operating, we are making the transatlantic flight from Boston to Shannon on the national airline of Ireland, AerLingus.

Our flight to Boston
arrived at nearly 1 p.m. It was about 20 minutes late taking off due to an
accident involving a nasty fall by another passenger on the moving sidewalk at
the Memphis
airport that required medical treatment. Our overnight flight out to Ireland
was not scheduled to leave until 7:15 p.m., so we took advantage of a fairly
new promotion by Delta to give holders of the Delta Platinum American Express
credit card access to its “Crown Room” for VIP travelers for $25 each. We had
the complimentary use of big easy chairs, assorted snacks and various
beverages. Due to my recovery from the brain aneurysm that nearly claimed my
life, I no longer drink much if any hard alcohol. But we did enjoy the
comfortable setting and free beverages and selected snackscompliments of Delta.

We had so-so salads for lunch at an airport eatery, deciding
we’d hold out to enjoy a firs-class dinner served in AerLingus’ overnight flight to Shannon, Ireland
in what it calls “Premier Class.”

The airline operates a similar VIP Lounge to that of Delta
in a separate terminal. There, I enjoyed a small portion of sliced salmon with
a small glass of tonic water (the quinine in tonic helps prevent night leg
cramps caused by my blood pressure medication effectively sucking potassium out
of my system).

Interestingly, only bottled water was available at the Boston airport and its
tenants. Posted notices in restrooms and elsewhere said the water was not fit
to drink due to contamination with sewage. No explanation was given.

We had splurged on this trip by paying a premium to fly
Business Class on AerLingus
on both transatlantic crossings. With both of us now retired and experiencing
some health issues, our financial status helped by the run-up in the stock
market the last year or so enabled us to pay the extra charges to enjoy the
comfort and service offered in the airline’s Premier Class service. It also
afforded us a better chance to get at least some sleep by not being crammed
into the tourist class seating in the airplane.

The AerLingus
jumbo jet was only abut half full. The empty spaces were probably a function of
relatively hard financial times in Ireland
and also tremendous uncertainty caused by volcanic ash in the air from Iceland. In
fact, some of the U.S-Europe flights had been
cancelled in the last few days because of international safety concerns the ash
posted jet engines.

On the positive side, the reduced number of passengers on
our flight gave us and a few others upgraded to Premier Class the undivided
attention of the youthful, cheerful and oh-so-polite AerLingus flight attendances. They were generally
attractive, young women in the front of the airplane. Betty and I had two very
large, reclining seats in the first row behind the flight attendant service
bulkhead. The seats reclined with the help of motors to several positions
including to a nearly flat bed. Available were real pillows and warm blankets.

The head flight attendant was a cheerful woman perhaps in
her 20s by the name of Gillian White, who told us she had grown up in Cork and one day hopes to visit Memphis and sample its grand music heritage
and tradition.

Even before the airplane took off, the flight attendants
offered – and we accepted – glasses of champagne while the passengers who paid
much less boarded in Tourist Class. The few of us in Premier Class were also
given nicely printed menus to select our evening meals. Betty and I chose filet
mignon, served with assorted vegetables and wine. Also offered was a dish of bro8led duck, cooked codfish and a special meal for
vegetarians. The small steaks were heated to our well-done preference and were
surprisingly good.

We passed on the availability of movies and other
entertainment on small TV screens mounted in the bulkhead to the front of our
seats, in favor of trying to sleep. The first hour of so of flight was a little
bumpy due to coastal winds. But once the AerLingus jet got to altitude, it was smooth flying all the
way to the coast of Ireland.
Betty and I were able to burrow up beneath the blankets (more of a quilted
variety than the tweed wool blankets the airline provided even passengers in
Tourist class on earlier flights we experienced) and nap for a couple or so
hours until the airplane ran into rough air.

We landed at ShannonAirport in Central
Ireland about 6:30 a.m. (Irish time) after a flight of nearly 6
hours. It was 12:30 a.m. in Boston and 11:30
p.m. in Memphis.
Those of us in Premier Class were deboarded first and
we breezed through Irish Customs, making for a wonderful start for our return
to a favorite and enchanted land.

We felt no need to “declare” a few souvenir, tiny bottles of
liquor served at no charge to Premier Class passengers on the flight including
Bailey’s Cream for Betty and Irish whiskey for me.

The only disappointment we had at Shannon
was that our Hertz rental car was not the Ford we had tried to book but a
substitute KIA SUV. The Korean-made KIA’s mysterious
controls posed a problem all week. In the absence of an instruction manual (a
Hertz employee later apologized and explained that some customers take the
manuals), we visited a garage in our destination city of Dingle to the south to get help from a
mechanic on how to operate the lights.